The modern state is built on declared readiness to inflict cruel death

Evidence

In brief, cruel modern technologies of destruction are integral to modern warfare, and modern warfare is an activity essential to the security and power of the modern state, on which the welfare and identity of its citizens depends. In war, the modern state demands from its citizens not only that they kill and maim others but also that they themselves suffer cruel pain and death. Human life is sacred, but only in particular contexts that the state defines. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 572

Categorization

• XREF: This is the grim inverse of the Cooper thread: the same modern state that Cooper shows underwriting family/Christian morality here underwrites mass death.
• DEEPTHINKING: Asad’s compression — state depends on citizens’ willingness to kill and be killed, yet forbids their free choice of death in peace — is a genuinely durable paradox worth sitting with.